Magikiras

Far from the best game by Hosted Games/Choice of Games. There are numerous errors, both grammatical and technical. At one point, a character's name just became "undefined." The game may end abruptly, just deciding that one has not completed enough objectives. Many paths are rushed, and do are not resolved properly if you follow them; either looping back to a decision that ultimately turns out the same (making it a false choice), or just ultimately going nowhere. If you want magitech, go for Emyprean. If you want battle suits, go for Mecha Ace. I'd not recommend this game, except with quite a large sale.

I rate the text-based 'choice-of' game Magikiras 2/5. Bad. I wanted to like this game and there are certainly things this game does well (the writing for action sequences isn't half bad and the world it describes is potentially interesting) but ultimately, this game isn't good. It's a choose-your-own adventure on rails that offers few real choices and even fewer choices which any character could ever plausibly make. On top of that, getting a happy ending is HARD to accomplish. +Good writing. Action sequences are particularly well done. Your character's physical sensations are fairly well described. +A generally good story arc could potentially occur in this game if you can manage to get a happy ending. +Still a fairly cheap game considering how much time it takes to read through this game (or even if you skim through it). +/-Interesting attempts to insert brain-teaser style puzzles into the game though if I wanted to do brain teaser puzzles I'd play a game which was all about that (there are myriad on the market). +/-Vaguely interesting characters though many of them feel like 2-dimensional character archetypes. -Almost impossibly difficult to get a happy romantic ending out of this game. The main romantic interest usually dies (or you have to end up killing her yourself) unless she gets turned into a cybernetic automaton. Ugh, what a downer ending that was. Trying to get a happy ending (often in vain) is why my playtime wound up being 21 hours. I never really succeeded either. If your goal is to get a happy ending out of this game you could get quite frustrated. -Story can often end with a feeling that the plot is not adequately resolved with many loose ends in any case. -Very difficult to not get an outright bad ending out of this game where you end up dying (though it is good that the game resets you back to the start of that chapter if you do die). -The entire ghost/shadow enemy plot line and the whole idea of using magic feels oddly tacked-on at the last minute, probably to give the game several (obviously, mostly duplicate) story arcs instead of just one story arc. But the absolute worst problems in this game are: --A huge number of the choices in this game are not really choices but merely dialogue tree options which will always (except in one particular situation) lead you back to a main prompt so you can see everything that every character says about each particular, important situation. Some dialog trees reminded me of trying to read The Count of Monte Cristo wherein your character winds up having basically the same conversation about the same topics with every single character the author could readily think of. --Some choices allow you to choose things which your character should not possibly, realistically be able to choose. You can, (and due to how this game is constructed, you must) make choices such as which enemy type you will be fighting right before the fighting starts. Choosing which kind of enemy you will face right before you begin fighting is totally implausible. --You can also choose to skip huge conversation segments and entire dialog trees with no adverse consequences whatsoever (which is nice when playing the game multiple times but doesn't really make any plausible sense for most characters). --Regardless of which enemy type (supernatural or human) you choose is going to be attacking you for the duration of the story, the basic plot structure results in the exact same story arc and results in extremely similar battle sequences in extremely similar settings. Eventually, the story always ends up having you enter a warehouse toward the end of the plot and fight a big battle in a cave. NO MATTER WHAT YOU DO unless you die before that point. There is no true freedom of choice in this game. Similarly, in the beginning of the game there will ALWAYS be a fight on a train. The game's plot is highly linear and most choices are mere checkpoints which determine whether you survive or not or are otherwise largely irrelevant to how things turn out in the end. This is a choose-your-own adventure game on rails. You have just as much (and as little) freedom of choice as you would if you were playing Doom 3. Very linear and in standard modern video game fashion, which alternate ending you get depends almost entirely on what you do during the final battle. --As usual for these 'choice of' text based games there is inexplicably no back button so you can't simply go back to any previous page. You can only go back to the beginning of a chapter and that's ONLY if your character dies. Overall, a fairly frustrating, very linear text-based game with some good action sequences. At least it's fairly cheap but I think the lack of freedom and frustration ultimately overule that benefit. There's the makings of a pretty good 'choice of' game here though so I'd like to see the author continue working on this story and maybe release it again as a second, better, extended version. Or maybe go an opposite route; maybe it should just be expanded and then released as a fleshed-out, linear, old-fashioned novel rather than as a half-baked "game."

I'm pretty certain the "Magitek" is powered by Robert Heinlein spinning in his grave...

This easily turned out to be my favorite choose your own adventure game so far. The story had me so engrossed that I was able to look past the few bumps along the way, specifically with some of the grammar. (Someone just needed to browse through and do a quick spellcheck and have a thesaurus handy. There was a sentence that used the word 'screen' 4 times. A million words is a lot to chew through so I can be forgiving, you're getting a lot of bang for your buck after all) But it was incredibly easy to look past because I was more interested in seeing what happened next. I only played it through once so I didnt get to see all the paths but I knew my choices refelcted a lot in the story and I even got the last chapter. I didnt even know there /was/ a specific path to get the last chapter, I just played the role of a military dog who pined over thier bootcamp friend and had to face the events to come. The delayed gratification I felt in the last chapter had me walking away satisfied and still wanting more. I never write reviews, but the lack of recommendation for this game is heartbreaking

its a good story in all. Little advice don't waste your time on puzzle, the game doesn't care to give you hints. Go for internet search.

I liked the world building, most of the characters are awesome, and the progression is at least noticeable. What really drives me off is the hard to read text itself. We read what the MC said ad the read again what the MC said, but explained. I.e.: "MC: I did THIS, because ..." then later "The MC did THIS because... " Maybe it is alright, but I really struggled on my second readthrough so much I couldn't finish. And why did I try to read it a second time? Because I couldn't finish the first through the mentioned, by others, "perfect writers path". Unless (though unlikely) this gets reworked and/or better redraft I don't recommend this.

So-so. Not as good as it could have been but better than I was expecting from the horrible reviews.

The game isn't perfect but I did enjoy the writing it's pretty solid and I enjoyed my character and the supportive cast surrounding them. I think it was a good idea to give our character a life outside of the robot and an actual history. They support cast were enjoyable and each added there own bit to the story some smaller than others, but they were actual people something that many writers still can't get right it really shows the talent of the writer. It's longer than other choice games over an million words if i recall and you do get a lot of story for a very good price sale or not which was a nice surprise compared to the multiple hundred thousand words stories I've enjoyed. I thought maybe I stumbled across some underappreciated gem at first as sadly some really good choice games sort of slide through the cracks, and I still in some odd way believe that i have. There points in the game where you have to select things that affect the entire game going forward that I don't recall the game mentioning would happen and you would be locked into it granted it's been a few awhile and I might have forgotten, but this choice can alter how things will workout and can't be changed in the end for certain characters. Characters arcs really don't get finished either at least in my playthrough. I was being set up to make major choice that would affect the future of my character and the group that they had been surrounded with and it's given a lot of weight and focus near the end and some time later the game just ends abruptly. I honestly looked at my screen for a moment confused at what just happened. I have issues with the puzzles and the fourth wall breaking it can be done well but it isn't established early on and just sort of thrown out there. How the game would move story forward is another things that bugged me from my research you have to play the game a certain way to get the best ending sort of sucks since if you enjoy playing another way you get forced into playing a way you don't want to. For all of these problems and there many more i could go onto describe them but I would just be parroting other reviews of the game at that point and in the end I did end up enjoying myself and ended up wishing I made time to play this game sooner. I had much more fun and genuine interest in the story with this game than I did frustration I'm hoping that the author is still writing and can make another choice game as there is amazing potential here. I would say buy it on sale though